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| Educational & Commercial Versions The educational version of Rhino will not share licenses with other computers on a network. This sharing is useful in large offices which may not need as many simultaneous users as they have computers with Rhino installed and thus can save a little money on the number of licenses. The two versions differ only in the handling of licenses. The practical functionality is the same. Once you have completed your training you can use your educational package commercially as long as you purchase the regular commercial license version for any additional workstations in the office on which you expect to use Rhino. Our design students, whether taking the main YDS curriculum teaching you to be a naval architect specializing in yacht and small craft design, or taking our optional CAD related courses get a very special very low price for the educational version. Please do not ask us to sell you Rhino at the educational price if you are not legitimately a student. This is not fair to the developers. They can only afford to be so generous to our students with the educational pricing because these students will influence the firms they go to or found to adopt the commercial version. We would never jeopardize our student's privilege of getting this wonderful software and it's plug-ins at such a generous discount. |
The official name of the software is Rhinoceros,
which is a registered trademark of Robert McNeel & Associates.
However it is universally and affectionately referred to as
"Rhino"
by everyone. While Rhino has been promoted since its inception rather modestly as a 3D NURBS "modeling" package, the software rapidly evolved far beyond this to become a full fledged, and extraordinarily powerful, CAD design package. Because naval architects were involved in its development from the first it is particularly powerful for use in our industry. In fact we have found that it is more versatile, more powerful, and far easier to use than any other computer assisted design package that we have tried. As near as we can tell the developers have deliberately underplayed the power of this package through a most unusual desire to work gracefully and cooperatively with everyone. While recommending that people have and use their software, they seem to make no attempt to get people to discard anyone else's software in favor of Rhino. This cooperative, non-competitive, attitude extends to making sure that Rhino can read and write as many types of files as possible. All this means that if you have Rhino you fit very comfortably into the industry and there are a very wide variety of packages and functions which Rhino works well with. Having said this, let us be very clear that Rhino is an extraordinary, powerful, versatile and complete on-screen design tool. It is perfectly possible to perform all of the drawing and modeling functions of yacht and small craft naval architecture, and many of the calculations directly in Rhino. You have been able to do complete working drawings to any degree of artistic expression without any limitations whatsoever since the last version, Version 4.0. Professionals will find that Rhino can do everything faster and better than can be done with manual drafting. Rhino is the first software which gives us the practical option of essentially never leaving the computer, and hardly leaving the program, as we develop an absolutely complete set of working drawings. However this is not all. In addition Rhino can produce files that can be used by CNC machines of various types to produce everything from the smallest of parts, and patterns for casting, all the way up to directly cutting full sized plugs and molds, plywood, solid wood, metal, or composite parts, etc. Using this one package you can design the hull, the rig, the deck hardware, produce kits, or molds, and even design jewelry for the crew if you want! This is just the briefest outline of Rhino's capabilities, there is far more on the Rhino web site but perhaps it will serve to indicate why in office after office Rhino has become more and more important. In an incredibly short time Rhino has become the most respected CAD package in the field of yacht and small craft naval architecture and whether it was the intent of the developers or not is rapidly displacing other programs as the core program around which design firms are building their CAD strategy. MacNaughton Yacht Designs was an early adopter of Rhino, which within a year had replaced about $9,300 of other software. We are proud to say the Yacht Design School was the first school of yacht and small craft naval architecture to develop a Rhino based CAD curriculum. Others are following suit now and we are quite sure that Rhino instruction will be the core CAD curriculum in this field of education for the foreseeable future. |